


Under a Filthy Cloak

by prettyforgemaster (crimsonherbarium)



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Compliant, Canon: Castlevania (Cartoon 2017), Comfort, Huddling For Warmth, Light Angst, M/M, Mentioned Dracula (Castlevania), Some Swearing, Touch-Starved, Touch-Starved Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya, Trevor is still not very good at comforting people, i wrote it as pre-trevorcard or pre-trephacard take your pick, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22756537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonherbarium/pseuds/prettyforgemaster
Summary: Trevor sighed. “Will you stop being such a stubborn sack of shit and just come over here?”“Why?” Alucard snapped. “Are you planning to stake me?”“Well, I was planning on offering to share my cloak with you, but now I’m reconsidering it.”(a brief moment of comfort on the road from Gresit)
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont
Comments: 28
Kudos: 352
Collections: Discord Community Archive





	Under a Filthy Cloak

Trevor Belmont had often dreamt of having others to travel with. A merry band of thieves and misfits, like those in the tales he could almost half-remember from when he was a child. 

He had thieves and misfits in spades, now. Though it was hard to see anything merry about their current situation.

Not even the crackling of the fire brought the slightest joy to the trio’s predicament. It smouldered miserably as he glared at it—a consequence of building it out of damp twigs, though that was all that was really available to them now—as if it, too, felt the weight that had settled down upon his shoulders.

They were going to have to kill Dracula.

Trevor supposed his ancestors might have been pleased. This was the task to which he’d been trained for most of his childhood. The one which had spelt death for so many of his forebears. Only a precious few had ever managed to catch even a glimpse of the man and lived. Generations of Belmont blood spilled both by creatures of the night and by the Church had led up to this.

Sypha, nestled in against his leg and half-covered by his cloak, snored softly in her sleep. Trevor had to chuckle at that. There was something endearing about it, about her cheek smushed up against his thigh and even the fact that she was drooling all over his trouser leg that always managed to soften his heart. It was hard to sit around brooding with someone like her in close proximity.

Although that didn’t seem to be stopping Alucard.

As Trevor reached out with a stick to poke halfheartedly at the charred branches in the hope of coaxing the fire to actually _burn_ for twenty fucking minutes instead of just smoking wetly, he couldn’t help but notice the dark shadow that had crossed Alucard’s face.

Nor the way, after a moment, he shivered and pulled his coat tighter around himself with fingers that had almost begun to turn blue.

“I didn’t think vampires felt the cold,” Trevor remarked, still prodding in vain at the remains of the fire.

Alucard glared at him out of the corner of his eye. “We do. Even Dracula himself, though I suspect he stopped caring about such things long ago.” He sighed. “And after all, I’m half-human. Or had you forgotten, Belmont?”

“Might’ve done.” Trevor shrugged and gestured vaguely. “Easy to do, what with the teeth and the shapeshifting and the...floating.”

“Naturally,” Alucard said bitterly. “What an easy mistake to make.” He shivered again.

Trevor sighed. “Will you stop being such a stubborn sack of shit and just come over here?”

“Why?” Alucard snapped. “Are you planning to stake me?”

“Well, I was planning on offering to share my cloak with you, but now I’m reconsidering it.”

Alucard hesitated.

“Or you can freeze to death. Doesn’t really matter to me either way.” Trevor tossed his makeshift poker aside and held up the edge of his cloak, making a space underneath for another person to occupy. It was on the small side for the three of them, but at the very least it was warmer than the piss-poor excuse for a bonfire.

Alucard hesitated again for a moment before blurring out of existence and appearing an instant later on Trevor’s left side, sitting on the damp ground at least a foot away from Trevor’s outstretched arm. The rough-spun fabric of the cloak barely reached far enough to halfway cover his shoulder.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Trevor muttered under his breath. 

He leaned over, careful not to disturb Sypha’s sleeping form, threw his arm around Alucard’s shoulders, and pulled him close, so that the three of them were huddled together underneath what was left of what had actually been a pretty nice travelling cloak when he’d first bought it. The past few months hadn’t been kind to it. Or him, for that matter.

Alucard’s body was cold to the touch—as much as Sypha’s had been during her brief stint as a statue in the catacombs beneath Gresit. Trevor was uncertain as to whether that was a consequence of his parentage, or if he was actually far closer to succumbing to hypothermia than he’d been letting on. 

He also couldn’t miss the way Alucard flinched at his touch. It was the briefest of gestures; if not for his necessary faith in his own senses, Trevor might have thought he’d imagined it. But Alucard had flinched, and even now that they were ostensibly huddled together for warmth, he sat as stiff as a board. 

Trevor swore internally. When was the last time someone had touched him? When was the last time he’d even spoken to another person? Alucard had been asleep under Gresit for at least a year. And even before that…well, it was hard to imagine Dracula as a loving father.

It was hard to imagine Dracula at all, really. As a man, with thoughts and feelings beyond the desire to impale people on pikes to decorate his garden with. Sitting across from his wife at the dinner table. Reading a book by the fire. Holding a baby he didn’t plan on eating.

But he had done those things, hadn’t he? Alucard had alluded to a childhood that wasn’t entirely unlike Trevor’s own—at least, before the excommunication and subsequent fall of his house. It was hard to reconcile the man Alucard described with the waking nightmare of what had befallen Wallachia.

“I don’t believe anyone can ever be entirely good or entirely evil,” Alucard said, as if reading his mind. “There’s a part of heaven and of hell in all of us. It’s up to us which wins out.”

“And Dracula?”

“Made his choice long ago.”

The muscle in Alucard’s jaw jumped as he stared into the embers of the fire. His hand had strayed unconsciously to his chest. Trevor winced, remembering the enormous wound, still only half-healed a year later, that lay just beneath his shirt. A wound that would have been fatal for a mortal man. A wound dealt by Dracula, the loving father of Alucard’s childhood, without restraint or remorse. 

“Tell me about the night creatures,” Trevor said after a moment, desperate for something to break the silence.

“Why?” Alucard glanced at him. “You’ve fought them.”

“Yes, and what I know about them comes from dusty old bestiaries and my grandfather’s even dustier stories. Enlighten me.”

“Hmm.” Alucard sighed. “They’re not unlike people. They have thoughts and desires of their own, in most cases. But they’re driven by an insatiable hunger, rather than any sort of morality.”

“And vampires aren’t?”

For a moment Trevor thought that Alucard might hit him, but then he chuckled. “You’d be surprised.”

What surprised Trevor more than anything was the relief he felt upon seeing the ghost of a smile cross Alucard’s face, no matter how brief. He’d largely kept to himself since they’d left Gresit, preferring to sit alone in the back of their covered wagon rather than join Trevor and Sypha up front. If he hadn’t occasionally traded the look of despair on his face for one of anger, Trevor might have thought it was permanent.

As the last stubborn flame guttered in the damp wind and finally died, Alucard leaned into Trevor. That surprised him, too, though he wasn’t really in a position to question it. He shifted slightly to make himself more comfortable and cleared his throat.

“You can sleep, if you want. I’ll keep watch for the horde.”

Alucard nodded. The two of them watched the horizon for a time, unable to mistake the faint screams that echoed across the land from Arges in the far distance.

Trevor wasn’t sure when it happened, but eventually Alucard did fall asleep, his head resting on Trevor’s shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> *rolls into fandom 3 years late with Starbucks* 
> 
> So uhhh season 3 is coming up in a couple of weeks and if Trevor and Sypha don't immediately turn their asses around and go back for Alucard I think I'm going to die. The trailer looks ominously like Alucard gets a new love interest so I'll be here, in denial, until the sun burns out.
> 
> If you liked this, please consider leaving me a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts :)


End file.
